I John 5: 18-21 Sermon

Subject — Affirmations
Theme — The final affirmations of John

Proposition – The final affirmations of John reminds of three basic fundamentals to the Christian faith he has been laboring to teach in his Epistle

Purpose — Therefore having considered these final affirmations let us take to heart these matters so that we might find ourselves ever more exulting in our Christian faith

Re-cap of Chapter 5

The subject of this Chapter has been that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. This theme is teased out in Chapter 5 when he begins by stressing the unity that exists between God and the believer as engendered by faith in Christ. Believers in Jesus Christ overcome the world and they reveal their love for God — a love engendered by faith in Christ — by their love for the Brethren, by their obedience to God’s commands.

John has told us that Jesus Christ came with the authority of Baptism (water) and shedding of blood (Cross). These were both events given the imprimatur of God’s voice. Not only do we have the testimony of Spirit, water and blood but we have the testimony of heaven. All this testimony confirms that Jesus is the Christ and has need to be received by men. Some men reject this testimony, thus making God out to be a liar, and some accept the testimony and are filled personally with the content of that testimony which is eternal life, so that the testimony of God is in them.

We have the assurance that God hears our prayers as we ask according to his will. Part of our prayer life includes asking for the Brother who has fallen into sin, though John tells us that there are those who are beyond the effectiveness of our prayers for them. John closes the chapter with a series of Affirmations and one vital admonition.

In his closing remarks John summarizes three facts that he has covered. He begins each of these summary statements with the phrase, “We know,”

It is interesting that he thus casts the Christian faith in terms of the understanding. By recapitulating what he has said he brings them back to a kind of Catechism. The Christian life is the life of the mind, of knowing. If we have no interest in knowing God, knowing the great truths of our Christian faith then we would be better served by calling ourselves something besides “Christian.”

I.) Affirmation #1 — The Christian Life Is Not Characterized By Habitual Determined Sinfulness (18, cmp. 3:6, 9)

As we have learned this affirmation may have need to be repeated by John because of the immorality of the Gnostics who, because of their belief system, were not concerned with the sins characterized by satiating lust and fleshly desires.

That John does not mean that the Christian never sins is seen by his reminder that if we sin, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sin. John is not dealing with the Christian who realizes he sins every day in word, thought, or deed, but he is warning against the kind of Christianity that is unconcerned about sin.

What John says here, is parallel w/ what Paul says when in Romans 6 he talks about being raised to newness of life.

A.) Hallmark of the Christian Community is that having been saved from Sin by Christ it distinguishes itself by its increasing, though never arrived at, Christ-likeness

It is interesting that more and more I see Churches selling themselves by advertising that their gathering is safe because it is a haven for sinners. And it is true that the Church should be a safe haven for sinners. However, the sense I often get from some who go by the name of “New Calvinists” that sinning is not something we should sweat about since we are righteous in Christ.

These folks take offense at Christians that articulate that the Christian life looks like something that resembles the ever increasing obedience of and respect for God’s commands. These new Calvinists have so redefined sanctification that if it exists it becomes largely immeasurable, unknowable, and unseen. I can not help but think that they would be put off with John’s call to not sin and to keep God’s commands.

This New Calvinism focuses hard on Christ’s work for us emphasizing that all our obedience will arise from that and there is truth in that idea but obedience can’t flow from Christ’s work if the believer isn’t told from God’s word what obedience looks like. And this is where new Calvinism falls down rather definitively. New Calvinism doesn’t want to explain to people what the Christian life looks like so that John’s affirmation “the believer does not habitually sin” looks like something concrete.

The Church ought to be a safe haven — a hospital — for sinners. A safe haven and hospital for recovering sinners where the elixir of eternal life is given in word and sacrament. But, as we’ve seen in 1st John it is a place where God’s people are instructed that they are to love the Brethren and they are to keep God’s commands and where they are told that Christians do not involve themselves in habitual . It is a place where God’s people are to be encouraged to put off the old man and put on the new man. It is a place where the foundation of doctrine (indicative) is laid and the path of duty (imperative is pointed towards).

So, when we sell the Church as a “safe haven for sinners,” without also mentioning that we look for sinners to become progressively incrementally more healthy we are involved in false advertising for the Church.

Why do Churches do this?

No one can say for sure but it should be observed that such advertising and soft pedaling on sin makes it comparatively easier to build big churches and take in large offerings. If God’s law, as a guide to life for the Redeemed sinner, isn’t articulated, and if sin isn’t closely defined then people will have no reason to quit attending or quit giving.

B.) This Christian life is not one of habitual determined sin because Christ keeps His people (John 17:12, 15)

That Christ keeps His people doesn’t mean that His people don’t sin. That Christ keeps His people doesn’t mean that His people don’t struggle with besetting sins. That Christ keeps His people means that He gives them a regard for sanctification.

Text — “He who is born of God” (Does this refer to Christ who keeps us, or does this refer to the believer who keeps himself.

The word touch means to harm or injure a person

This text also reminds of the preserving power of God for His people. Being born of God we are sealed unto the day of redemption. We can be confident, not because of our holiness, or our ability (those would be very foolish things to place confidence in) but we can be confident because that God, of whom we are born, is the God who keeps us until the very end. (Perseverance of the saints).

II.) Affirmation #2 — We Know That There Is A Difference Between “Us,” & “Them” (19)

Mankind is divided into two great parties or special interest groups, those which belong to God and those which belong to the world (those in Adam).

Scripture teaches that God’s people are His portion and that he has made Jacob His inheritance (Dt. 32:9), while the rest seek to throw off his chains. Those opposed to God are not all equal in their depravity and so not all as epistemologically self-conscious in their hatred towards God (I John 5:10) and God’s people but there is this divide, this antithesis of which we must be constantly aware.

“whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.”

This is another way of saying that those who are outside of Christ are under the dominion of Satan. It is not saying that the world belongs to Satan. Satan can not lay claim to creating and owning the Cosmos, though he can lay claim to holding sway over all those in Adam.

Yet, though the world lies in the sway of the wicked one we know that this same wicked one has been bound and despoiled of his goods (Matthew 12:29f) by virtue of the Lord Christ’s bringing of the Kingdom through His death on the Cross. Jesus has come to drive out the wicked one and Jesus claims the world now which rightfully belongs to God. We, who have been born of God, are the first fruits of those who have been delivered from this present evil age but we anticipate that the Kingdoms of this world becoming the Kingdoms of our Lord precisely because they are already His Kingdoms.

However, we must keep in mind that there is a antithesis between believer and unbeliever.

Further it would be wise to understand that with the passage of time the antithesis becomes more and more pronounced. Those in Christ go on in Christ-likeness and those outside of Christ become increasingly consistent in being under the sway of the wicked one.

III.) Affirmation #3 — The Son Has Come And Has Given Us Understanding

The idea of “Him who is true.” (True in opposition to what is fictitious)

Given us understanding — Christian doctrine of illumination
Given us understanding — Christianity as the life of the mind
Given us understanding — Eternal life is wrapped up, not in experience, not in emotion, but in knowing God

Dispute regarding text — How are the pronouns to be read

Application — Lack of emphasis on knowing God in the contemporary Church as seen in the despising of Catechisms and Confessions.

“In Him who is true” — Spiritual Union of Christ with the Body (Head & Members) Pneumatology / Christology

IV.) Exhortation — Idols

It may be that John’s reminding them of being given the understanding of the true God leads Him to the final Imperative.

False gods
False conceptions of God

Remember what he is fighting are those who are selling false conceptions of Jesus Christ (Gnostics) and so false conceptions of God.

Of course the temptation to idolatry has always been the bane of God’s people. Calvin could say that the human heart was an idol factory. We are forever prone to make God out of just about anything — even the best of things which are ruined because we turn them into idols, esteeming the gift more than the giver.

Application

What are our Idols?

Leisure
State
Church
Family

Conclusion

The encouraging matter of all this is that while we may be convicted of our idolatry tendencies that God promises His people that they will continue to look to Christ for forgiveness and will continue to be renewed so that we are more and more God centered and less and less self and idol centered.

Re-cap
Purpose statement.

Beware Where You Get Your Truth

“… Our conquerors strain every nerve to preoccupy the ears of all America with the false version of affairs which suits the purposes of their usurpation. With a gigantic sweep of mendacity, the literature aims to falsify or misrepresent everything; the very facts of history, the principles of the former Constitution as admitted in the days of freedom by all Statesmen of all parties; the character and motives of our patriots; the very essential names of rights, virtues, and vices. The whole sway of their commercial and political ascendancy is exerted… Its sheets come up like frogs of Egypt, into our houses, our bed chambers, our very kneading troughs.

Our age presents the strange instance of a numerous party, who think they can circumvent the resistless force of truth by systematically misnaming facts and fallacies, who are deliberately building a whole system of empire on the substitution of light for darkness, and darkness for light, of good for evil and evil for good, calling that master in our government which was servant, that patriotism which was treason, and that treason which was righteous defense.”

R. L Dabney
19th Century Southern Theologian
Discussions – Secular — pg. 21

Dabney was speaking in 1882 but all of this remains so in 2012. To get to the truth you have to cut through the fog of contemporary and historical deceit.

Women & The Home

“There in your homes, is your domain. There you rule w/ the scepter of affection , and not our conquerors. We beseech you, wield that gentle empire in behalf of the principles , the patriotism, the religion, which we inherited from our Mothers. Teach our ruder sex that only by deathless love to these can woman’s dear love be deserved or won. Him who is true to these, crown with thy favor. Let the wretch who betrays them be exiled forever from the paradise of your arms. Then shall we be saved, saved from a degradation fouler than the grave. Be it yours to nurse with more than vestal’s watchfulness, the sacred flame of our virtue, now so smothered. Your task is unobtrusive; it is performed in the privacy of the home, and by the gentle touches of daily love. But it is the noblest work which mortal can preform, for it furnishes the polished stones with which the temple of our liberties must be repaired…. The home and the fireside are the scenes of your industry. But the materials which you shape are the souls of man, which are to compose the fabric of our Church and state. The politician, the professional man, is but the cheap, rude day laborer, who moves and lifts the finished block to its place. You are the true artists, who endue it with fitness and beauty; and therefore yours is the nobler task.”

R. L. Dabney
19th Century Southern Theologian
Discussions, Vol IV — pg. 121-122

Equality … Then & Now

The Equality of the modern has no continuity with the Equality of the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta argued for equality before the law of all according to their franchise and station. This is the equality which is thoroughly consistent with that wide diversity of natural capacities, virtue, station, sex, inherited possessions, by which no social order can function without.

No, the equality of the modern is the equality of the Jacobin — of the Sans Culotte — which absurdly claims for every human the same specific powers and rights. This modern equality is the equality of the Leveller, the Anabaptist and the Communist. This absurd equality overturns all ability to build a coherent social order because it overturns all ability to make proper distinctions between people according to their diverse abilities and roles.

The Pursuit To Eliminate National Sovereignty In Favor Of Internationalism

‎”We are at present working discreetly but with all our might, to wrest this mysterious force called sovereignty out of the clutches of the local national states of our world. And all the time we are denying with our lips what we are doing w/ our hands, because to impugn the sovereignty of the local national states of the world is still a heresy for which a statesman or a publicist can be, perhaps not quite burned at the stake, but certainly ostracized and discredited.”

Arnold Toynbee
Spoken in a Toynbee Lecture from 1931

One can go as far back as the Congress of Vienna to find a movement to create a Global Order where national sovereignty would be a matter of the past. Of course, this movement gained steam in the 20th century with the “League of Nations” and later the United Nations. In our time the pressure is increasing to strip nations (especially of the West) of their sovereignty.

This article,

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/germanys-role-europe-and-european-debt-crisis?utm_source=freelist-f&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20120131&utm_term=gweekly&utm_content=readmore&elq=4b299463d0e34f73833ad63e54d0fbd8

examines how Greece is on the cusp of losing its national sovereignty to the European Union.

Also, the international flow of both legal and illegal immigration is intended to strip nations of their sovereignty by turning all Western nations into universal nations, that is nations without a identifiable cultural core. A nation that has no cultural core is a nation ripe to be amalgamated into the New World order that is being pursued by the money interest.

A close look at United Nations projects like “Agenda 21” also reveal the Toynbee push towards the reduction of national sovereignty.

One great need of the time is for more people to turn off their college sports game, or their “American Idol,” and come to terms with the fact that there is a great push going on currently to destroy national sovereignty. This pursued destruction of national sovereignty implies the destruction of family units since nations cannot be destroyed without families being destroyed.